Pillar posts build the support for your blog much like pillars are used in building to hold up a structure. Pillar posts are quality informational posts that people will tell others about. This creates links back to your post as the word spreads.
Here are two types of posts that will work as pillar posts.
- Resource lists
- How to posts
One of my blog just discusses WordPress and blogging. Here are some sample resource lists I could use.
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10 must have WordPress plugins
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My 5 Favorite Themes and Why
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7 Ways To Generate More Visitors To Your Blog
As much as possible try to make these evergreen topics with in your niche. By evergreen I mean topics that will still be valuable 6 months, a year, two years or more from now.
Social media is an example of where a topic can change quickly. Right now the hot topic is Twitter, last year all you saw was Facebook information, before that everything was MySpace.
Now it may just be me but it has been a while since anyone has been pushing MySpace tools, tips and tricks but not a day goes by that I don’t see Twitter information. A Twitter pillar post can bring you good traffic right now but it may or may not be pulling visitors next year.
Compare that to a post I did on my blog about adding an Aweber form to your WordPress blog. It is a how to post with lots of screen captures and a step by step walk through. This post was done over a year ago and still draws good traffic each week.
As long as WordPress and Aweber stick around the odds are good that it will still be working and of value three years from now. That is an evergreen topic.
How to posts work best when you cover a common problem that people have. Here is an example from this week end when I wrote a post called “Improving Your Blogs Look“.
It covers how to change the default header or to add a new theme to a WordPress blog. It has lots of screen captures and walks the reader through the steps. It provides valuable information and should draw links from others pointing to it as a resource.
Adding a quality post like these examples for topics within your niche to your blog on a regular basis will help you build natural links and become a recommended resource. The key though, as with all things blogging, is to do your keyword research and find the terms that have traffic, are not super competitive and are commercially viable.
Pillar posts added regularly targeting these words will draw natural links and generate visitors for your blog.
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Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. Check out his upcoming class “How to Generate Traffic Drawing Keywords“.
